Finally!

For the week of Oct. 7-15.

I know I haven’t written in a while and I apologize. I haven’t had the chance until now. The last three weeks have been crazy. I will give you a brief overview (ok as brief as possible) of three weeks ago and then my next entry will be about my two weeks that I just spent in Croatia. Pretend like you are reading this 3 weeks ago!

My week started out with making pumpkin pies on Monday. As you know I have Mondays free and I had my family send me pumpkin pie mix from home so that I could make them for my host family. The pie mix made two pies and I ended up taking the 2nd one with me to school on Tuesday. My first dilemma was in making the crust. I had to substitute a baking butter for Crisco, which I thought would cause the pies to burn, but it ended up working out really well. The pie was absolutely delicious and my host family thought so too. They couldn’t come up with a taste that resembled pumpkin. I told them it is a taste of its own. They hadn’t ever had it either. All of my colleagues seemed to like the pie too. They hadn’t ever had it either. One of my teachers bragged to her class about how good it was. I wasn’t at school the whole day on Tuesday because I went on a field trip with Mr. Meyer, but they said as soon as I left, the pie was cut and vanished. Everyone complimented me on Wednesday and I was glad that they enjoyed the taste of an American specialty. Pumpkin is not really very popular in Europe. I think it is probably just an American and Canadian thing. I enjoy exchanging American culture with my German colleagues and it is nice that we can both learn something new at the same time.

On Wednesday, I was once again traveling around with Mr. Meyer. Our students were doing internships at different businesses in Kiel (this is a requirement for school and they do this for 2 weeks) and so we had to visit four of them to make sure things were going well and to thank the companies/businesses for allowing the students to be there. This was very interesting for me since we have nothing like this in the U.S. The students are allowed to choose where they do the internship and the company or business has to agree. We went to 2 Kindergartens (here they are like preschools), a company that sells apartments, and then the most interesting of all, the Canal Island. The Canal Island is exactly that, an island that lies in the middle of the North-Baltic Sea Canal. Only people with special permission or people who pay to take a tour are allowed on the island besides the people who work there. Our student took us as VIPs into the museum and showed us the development and a model of the canal.

On Thursday I was invited to go with a 12th grade German class to the Thalia Theater in Hamburg to see Maria Stuart by Schiller. Of course I agreed to go. We left around 5 in the evening and returned at midnight. The drama was modernized, which I am not a huge fan of and was performed on a rotating stage. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see and the theater itself was impressive. This was a very nice evening and I must admit that the students were very well-behaved.

On Friday morning, the first two hours I was to have my very first self-prepared classes as a teaching assistant. I was allowed to choose the topic and went with Stereotypes for the first hour and American school for the second. I think both were very successful. My 8th graders had never heard of the word ‘stereotype’ so my lesson was very productive and they managed to learn exactly what I had wanted them to. I had them perform “freeze frames” (acting out a scenario without movement) filling in the blank of “All Americans ” It was interesting to see what the students came up with and how the others interpreted what they were acting out. One group chose to complete the sentence with “All Americans drive big cars” and one student interpreted it as “All Americans have Chauffeurs!” I found this hysterical and so did the actual teacher of the class. Another funny one was “All Americans have guns” and a student interpreted it as “All Americans are criminals.” This almost brought me to tears from laughter! I asked the kids if they thought I was a criminal and they all laughed. I told them it wouldn’t be possible for me to be here if that were the case!! We then discussed whether or not stereotypes are good or bad and where they come from. Keep in mind this is 8th grade and we did this all in English. Yeah, German schools are way more advanced in foreign languages than the U.S. We are lucky if we start a language in the 8th grade. Anyway I could rant for hours about that.

I think the kids also enjoyed the second lesson I taught. I brought in two yearbooks, one from my high school and one from Bethany and let the students look at them. They soon started playing a game of who could find the most pictures of me! I couldn’t help but laugh. My teacher said, “I didn’t know you were a cheerleader.” and then I had to go on the defensive end of “cheerleading as a sport” and the stereotypes of jocks and cheerleaders. I like to think of myself as breaking down stereotypes : )This was a good connection to my first lesson. After they looked at my yearbooks, we discussed some of the differences in American schools and German schools and things such as sports, clubs, prom, and homecoming.

On Friday, I had a short day and was allowed to leave early to pick up my friend Helen, who I lived with at the Fulbright Orientation. She teaches in Satrup, a village of 300 or so people and traveled to Kiel by bus, a 3 hour ride because the trains were striking AGAIN. She stayed until Sunday and I gave her the grand tour of Kiel. I took her to Laboe and to Schilksee where the ’72 water Olympics were held. Friday night we met the teaching assistant crew for Chinese…mmm.

On Saturday Helen and I were invited to Canadian Thanksgiving dinner (FYI held in October) hosted by my friend Dierdre from Nova Scotia. Dierdre is very sarcastic and likes to make fun of the U.S. She claims that Canadian Thanksgiving was first and that Americans copied and made their own date. Does anyone know the reality behind this? I don’t. Anyway there were around 20 people there. Twelve of us were teaching assistants and Helen and I were the only Americans. The rest were from Canada, Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland, quite a crowd if I may say so. We all prepared dinner together in D’s apartment. We had an assembly line going. People were peeling carrots and potatoes, while others were making pie, and a few people were cooking. Of course the girl from Ireland ended up eating the rest of the potatoes. I guess some stereotypes you just can’t avoid!! She was also juggling gourds if this tells you anything about my friends here.

On Sunday we went walking on the beach with my host mom and grandma. Oh yeah and I forgot to mention that we took a bus tour of the countryside by accident. Apparently there are two buses with the same exact number that stop at my bus stop and they go to two different places. We wanted to take the one to Schilksee but ended up in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. We knew we made a mistake when it was the last bus stop and we were the only people left on the bus. We got a good laugh out of this and I asked the bus driver about how to get where we wanted to go. He didn’t even have a clue! We rode the bus back to my stop and 2 minutes later we were sitting in the same number bus but arrived at the destination we originally wanted…yeah sometimes the bus system in Germany can be complicated...I still don’t understand what happened there!